Atheist Nexus2017-09-26T22:16:45ZKane Augustushttp://atheistnexus.org/profile/KaneAugustushttp://api.ning.com:80/files/ByLwr1NCORyZ-1BakoDOB-d425tSdluGhpmCJJE9-U3on8svG1k6FrEG1Yw-aJO7W9CxX0KdDHF*QF8Hf6O*4J2lxYZJL*9k/999921310.jpeg?xgip=74%3A0%3A452%3A452%3B%3B&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1http://atheistnexus.org/group/ffrf/forum/topic/listForContributor?user=3peper6tjj83b&feed=yes&xn_auth=noAnnie Laurie Gaylor Addresses NOFS "Freethought Fiesta"tag:atheistnexus.org,2016-11-19:2182797:Topic:27195512016-11-19T21:08:07.306ZKane Augustushttp://atheistnexus.org/profile/KaneAugustus
<p>This past April, the Northern Ohio Freethought Society sponsored a "Freethought Fiesta," which among other things featured some terrific Mexican cooking for attendees and a talk by Freedom From Religion Foundation Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. Annie Laurie gave the audience a summary of what the FFRF has accomplished in the field of church / state separation, lawsuits successfully prosecuted and actions currently pending in the courts.<br></br><br></br>Her talk was recently published on YouTube…</p>
<p>This past April, the Northern Ohio Freethought Society sponsored a "Freethought Fiesta," which among other things featured some terrific Mexican cooking for attendees and a talk by Freedom From Religion Foundation Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. Annie Laurie gave the audience a summary of what the FFRF has accomplished in the field of church / state separation, lawsuits successfully prosecuted and actions currently pending in the courts.<br/><br/>Her talk was recently published on YouTube and I thought I would share it with you. Please enjoy.<br/><br/><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/chE7Nu9Nvv8?wmode=opaque" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</p> Human soultag:atheistnexus.org,2015-01-12:2182797:Topic:25313072015-01-12T07:43:27.954ZKane Augustushttp://atheistnexus.org/profile/KaneAugustus
<p>I've heard many so called atheists refer to the "soul" as if it actually existed. </p>
<p>My question is: If you believe humans have a soul are you really an atheist? </p>
<p>I've heard many so called atheists refer to the "soul" as if it actually existed. </p>
<p>My question is: If you believe humans have a soul are you really an atheist? </p> Be it enacted by citizens of United States of America, three citizens be designated as true patriotstag:atheistnexus.org,2014-03-30:2182797:Topic:24009962014-03-30T19:07:42.468ZKane Augustushttp://atheistnexus.org/profile/KaneAugustus
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Whereas, Olivia McConnell, Eight-year-old, wrote her South Carolina state representatives; and </span></p>
<p class="p2"></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Whereas, Olivia provided a legitimate reason to suggest this legislation:</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">1. One of the first discoveries of a vertebrae [sic] fossil in North America was on an S.C. plantation when slaves dug up wooly mammoth teeth from a swamp in 1725.…</span></p>
<p class="p1"></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Whereas, Olivia McConnell, Eight-year-old, wrote her South Carolina state representatives; and </span></p>
<p class="p2"></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Whereas, Olivia provided a legitimate reason to suggest this legislation:</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">1. One of the first discoveries of a vertebrae [sic] fossil in North America was on an S.C. plantation when slaves dug up wooly mammoth teeth from a swamp in 1725.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">2. All but seven states have an official state fossil.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">3. “Fossils tell us about our past.”</span></p>
<p class="p2"></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Whereas, She sent the letter to Representative Robert Ridgeway (D) and Sen. Kevin Johnson (D), asking them to sponsor a bill officially making the woolly mammoth the official state fossil.</span></p>
<p class="p2"></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Whereas, Representative Robert Ridgeway (D) and Sen. Kevin Johnson (D), sponsored a bill officially making the woolly mammoth the official state fossil; and</span></p>
<p class="p2"></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Whereas, “the benefit to this is to the children and young people of South Carolina, letting them realize that they do have a say-so in what happens in South Carolina and, No. 2, it gives them experience and information about the governmental process and legislative process in South Carolina.”</span></p>
<p class="p2"></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Be it enacted by the citizens of the United States of America, that Olivia McConnell, Representative Robert Ridgeway (D) and Sen. Kevin Johnson (D), be designated at true patriots in their work to separate religion from government. </span></p> Atheism VS Islamtag:atheistnexus.org,2013-08-09:2182797:Topic:22835312013-08-09T02:45:48.642ZKane Augustushttp://atheistnexus.org/profile/KaneAugustus
<p>Atheist Guy together with Muslim Girl = Clash of the Titans.....who wins?</p>
<p>Atheist Guy together with Muslim Girl = Clash of the Titans.....who wins?</p> Still Active in Christian Fundamentalist Molestation Casetag:atheistnexus.org,2013-07-03:2182797:Topic:22639942013-07-03T22:34:12.580ZKane Augustushttp://atheistnexus.org/profile/KaneAugustus
<p>I’m still acting in the matter of the Christian Fundamentalist Daughter Molester. Inserting myself into this and continuing to take action has heightened my awareness of all the myriad forms of passivity and denial. It’s made me different too. I can look much deeper into my own life. I have a much better understanding as to the buried matters which have shaped me. I’m more able to break cleanly with all the social institutions which promote denial and conformity. I’m less interested in…</p>
<p>I’m still acting in the matter of the Christian Fundamentalist Daughter Molester. Inserting myself into this and continuing to take action has heightened my awareness of all the myriad forms of passivity and denial. It’s made me different too. I can look much deeper into my own life. I have a much better understanding as to the buried matters which have shaped me. I’m more able to break cleanly with all the social institutions which promote denial and conformity. I’m less interested in self-pity, and even more interested in action.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Just today I’ve acted to continue something which has already cost several people their jobs, and is going to cost someone else over a million dollars. The initials of this person are M.L. He has already felt my actions to the tune of at least $4k out of pocket, plus a great deal of embarrassment. But the big impact is still coming. I’m making strikes of one kind or another continually. I’m simultaneously attacking in as many places as I can.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Now I can even envision some scenarios where I could make a fighting re-entry into some realms that I was driven out of 20 years ago, and 30 years ago. Moving to action, inflicting consequence on people, can have this power of giving one a second chance in realms once thought completely closed off. Now the re-entry does have to be a fighting re-entry. That means that it too is based on inflicting consequence on people. You have to re-enter surrendered realms this way, by kicking ass. Otherwise you are just asking for pity. What it is always about are social legitimacy and power.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>We gain power when we stand up for ourselves, and when we conduct ourselves in such a way that people admire us and so they stand with us. This way we come to have comrades. We destroy our power when we give people like therapists pedagogical authority and when we confess our intentions to them.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>If you want to build power, then you are very careful about what you disclose, and to who you disclose it. Aggressive actions require operational security. You don’t want to waste your energy in senseless arguments with worthless people. You don’t want to be causing problems for yourself on down the line either.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>If you are someone like me, then your life has been shaped by social stigma, stigma caused by the volitional acts of others. Then this social stigma compounds. The original violation is not recognized. Instead, you are the one held responsible. So each time there is a denial of a violation, there is a new layer of compounding. So then the real variable is how you respond to these multiple stigma. If you pretend that they do not exist, use denial, then you will always be struggling and always be doubting yourself. I feel it safe to say that a huge segment of the population lives their entire lives this way.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Another way is to recognize the stigma, but then remain in denial about the cause. False causes and no fault causes, are invented. You see this in the realm of learning disorders and psychiatric diagnoses. The party will see that they have some basic difference, but they exaggerate it and attach themselves to this concretized belief about it. They deny the real origins of the situation, along with their own experience. I have written about how strongly I disagree with John Elder Robison and how he believes in his autism-Asperger’s condition. Then he tries to argue that his autism gives him certain strengths. But the fact is that he shouldn’t have to argue for anything. Such belief systems are another form of denial. The Christian Fundamentalist Daughter Molester believes he suffers from a psychiatric condition and he has tried very hard to build a life and a career on this basis. What he certainly has been able to do is make everything about his family revolve around it, and he has come very close to being able to make his criminal case revolve around it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Either way, denial prevents one from striking back. So it amounts to an appeal for pity. You are saying, “Yes, I have this deficiency, so please make an accommodation for me.” Robison says, “They don’t owe you an accommodation.” This is wrong; they do owe you an accommodation. Even more, they owe you the basic respect for personhood and privacy so that no accommodation is even needed. What they must do is revoke the conformist standards from which one might seek an accommodation. Robison says that they don’t owe you an accommodation, but he is still acting like he needs an accommodation. He is asking for pity. And of course some of the worst pity is Christian pity.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It all changes when instead of asking for accommodations and pity, you have scalps to show. I’m talking about the infliction of consequence on living persons, persons who presumably had some ability to defend themselves. I’m not talking about waiting until people die so you can piss on their graves or write tell all books. I’m talking about standing up to people while they are still alive, inflicting severe consequence, and then bragging about it. When you have done this, when this is your public reputation, then you no longer have this compounded stigma. Instead, people start lining up behind you. Tangible Results, not Therapeutic Release.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When one still has not acted, then the stigma compounds because it is seen as being all in your head. One might engage in meditation, one might confess to a therapist, one might engage in histrionics to ‘get it all out’, or one might seek Jesus. No matter what though, it’s still seen as all being in your head, all being about you, and all being your compounded problem and your failure to become “well adjusted”. People make it this way, they do this to us, because we let them!</p>
<p> </p>
<p>One the other hand, once you are able to strike blows, able to vanquish foes, then it is about tangible issues, and you become a hero.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Enlightenment seeking, nirvana seeking, therapy, pillow punching, recovery, religion, it’s all just more denial. It’s self-abuse. It’s the realm of collaborators. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that you stand with the child, but then offer nothing except commiseration. If you stand with the child, then you have to be inflicting consequences on those who justify themselves by using and abusing children. Unless we can band together and strike blows, then we will always be oppressed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>If you try to indict your parents, but then all you are willing to do about it is confess to therapists and read books about new and improved pedagogy, then you are not standing with your child. You are still coming from the position that it is your child who is in the wrong and who is going to have to learn to change and somehow ‘just get over it’. You are still worshiping The Family. You are trying to anesthetize yourself and you are trying to win approval by aligning yourself with liberal pedagogy. You still want to believe that redress is not required.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Being in Austria and witnessing the outbreak of WWI, Freud wrote dismally about man’s innate aggressive and violent tendencies. He did not say that there was something wrong with monarchy or with capitalism, just with man’s innate aggressive and violent tendencies. This would become the underlying foundational premise of psychoanalysis. Aggressive tendencies are always seen as reversion to some sort of unenlightened and flawed state.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>This became Alice Miller’s problem too. She wanted to have it both ways. On the one hand, she is one of but a very few who have been able to show what it is like from the child’s perspective and to show how the child is being used. But on the other hand, Miller was committed to Nirvana. This is what brought her to the works of Freud and into psychoanalytic training. She needed to believe that there was some way to avoid the need to redress wrongs and avoid the need to retake social and civil standing. So she showed us the child’s perspective and showed us how people have children to fulfill their own narcissistic needs. She showed us how pedagogy, conservative and liberal, is always just a means of legitimating the parent and using the child. Then she showed us how the child is further betrayed by psychotherapy, religion, and by our entire society. But then that was it. She could not go any further. She could not violate the prime directive of psychotherapy: Thou shalt take no acts of aggression, except against feather pillows. Miller could not endorse any<br/>path of action to redress the wrongs. So instead she led her readers back into therapy, multiple times, in a desperate attempt to avoid the need to act.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Just like Freud, Miller feared these innate aggressive tendencies. She said of Moria that if Isaac raised his hand against Abraham, then “that would start the war we all fear.” At the time I first read this I accepted her logic. It sounded so morally elevated, so I figured I should accept it. I do not accept it any more. Why would we all fear such a war? I do not fear it. People fear it because then they would have to actually face the pain of how they were used, broken, and crushed. They cannot face what they have lost. And they cannot face how deliberately it was done to them. They cannot face how our society sanctions it. Miller cannot face this, so instead she only wants Isaac to ask, “Why?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Like Freud, Miller was a Jew. Jews had survived for over a thousand years by being accommodating and by looking for protectors, but not by fighting back. As a young woman, Miller survived the Warsaw ghetto. In book 8, Paths of Life, she writes dismissively of the one time that Jews did fight back, the ghetto uprising. She could not face the fact that there are only two ways, redress or collaboration. She had a desperate need to believe that there is some way of facing the pain, but still without doing anything about it. It’s an absurd idea. People who are not acting, are not actually facing the pain, they are dissociating. But people still cling to the idea that they are facing the pain, so that they don’t have to face it. This led Miller into a form of Primal Therapy. And then after that her writing no longer had its power to penetrate. She turned into a kind of a liberal pedagogue herself, and her further contribution was extremely limited.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And let there be no doubt about it, some of the biggest online shits I’ve ever encountered are the devotees of Primal Therapy. One woman, herself a practicing primal therapist, was very angered by my posting. So to deflect discussion, she introduced the subject of “somatic experiencing”. She wants to know how to make such somatic experiences go away. Yes, that’s right, she is committed to the view that it’s all in your head, and so you just have to figure out some way of excising it. She uses Primal Therapy as an opiate. It’s not just to make her feel good. It’s because she wants to believe that redress is not required. She wants to believe that it’s just painful memories. So of course, such a person is a collaborator.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Well, it’s not just painful memories. You can see the effects in your social and civil standing. It’s in the opportunities you have lost. It’s in the social institutions and practices you’ve had to defend against because they are realms where you don’t have legitimacy. It’s in your lost relationship, educational, career, and economic opportunities. It’s in your compromised physical health.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>You don’t get any of it back by confessing to your therapist, by punching pillows, or by reading books about communications skills and liberal pedagogy. The only redress is found in building a band of comrades and then striking blows, inflicting consequence. This is the only way that things will ever change. It’s the only way that we, the ones facing the truth, will ever have social legitimacy.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Here is a list of all the faults that parents find in their blacksheep children. It should look familiar:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>• Drug and alcohol abuse</p>
<p>• Failed personal and romantic relationships</p>
<p>• Loss of religious faith, in cases of clergy abuse</p>
<p>• Disinterest in family relationships</p>
<p>• Disintegration of a family</p>
<p>• Poor self-esteem</p>
<p>• Feelings of deep depression</p>
<p>• Difficulties with casual social relationships</p>
<p>• Feelings of isolation and despair</p>
<p>• Loss of trust in authority figures and institutions who don't report child molestation</p>
<p>• Despair in reaction to persecuting attitudes of police</p>
<p>• Anger</p>
<p>• Inappropriate sexual behavior</p>
<p>• Poor work habits</p>
<p>• Unemployment or underemployment</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The streets of America are filled with such persons. Always they are being told that they need Recovery, they need Jesus, and they need to learn Personal Responsibility. But this list was not presented as a list of faults. Can you guess where I got it from? I got this from a prominent law firm which handles cases of childhood sexual abuse. These they consider to be the long term effects of such abuse. Get it, the faults that parents find in their blacksheep children are exactly the long term symptoms of childhood abuse.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>If you are somebody who tells people that they need therapy, that they need to punch pillows, that they need to learn about liberal pedagogy, or that there can be no redress, then you are a collaborator. You are making the people who want to fight back wrong, and you are helping the perpetrators. Because you can’t face the pain yourself, you are attacking those who are trying to face it, those who don’t want to ‘just get over it’. I am offended that you are even breathing air.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I stand up to such cock roaches in my face to face life on a daily basis now. I don’t take any shit. No one fucks with me because I don’t give them the chance. I maintain and defend the very highest of privacy walls. People who have still tried to denigrate me, have lived to regret it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>That’s face to face. Online however can be a different matter. Some people are drawn to online because they believe that they can use it to disrespect people with impunity. Well it’s not going to matter. The power they have given themselves only works on their own kind. Those who use online this way are completely irrelevant. And no, I’m not promoting Live and Let Live here. As people stand up to the collaborators face to face, the tolerance for those who use online to aid the perpetrators will also vanish.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Judaism is actually something Deleuze and Guattari look to, though not to Zionism. They see in the Jew the one who has no place because he rejects ideologies. He is the one singled out as the scapegoat ( Cain, Jonah ), the one who has to keep moving. They describe this as deterritorialization. But included in this for them is the ability to organize and to strike blows. It’s actually in this organizing that power is developed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Rather than follow Freud, Miller, or the Primal Therapy devotees, I look to the Abolitionist movement. One of my particular heroes has long been John Brown. Turns out that he is someone Deleuze and Guattari also admire. Brown became the scapegoat, the one who has to keep moving. As they put it, he became other by becoming black.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>What Deleuze and Guattari say in Anti-Oedipus is that the State is always the problem. Some critics have misunderstood this. They seem not to have noticed that they also say that Capitalism can always allow for additional axiomatics, like for workers and for women. What they mean is that the forces which keep the State in place are the forces of repression. But they are also describing the development of Social Democracy which can make provisions for those disenfranchised and vulnerable. Some critics of D and G have missed this second part.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Remember my initial concern about this case. I did not want to be one of those calling for tougher criminal enforcement, and strengthening a system which already incarcerates huge numbers of poor and minorities, and mostly for things which are the result of just being economically disenfranchised. Often prison inmates are just the blacksheeped children. I do not want to contribute to the state repression. So the only way I could see myself aiding in this effort to put the defendant in prison for decades, would be if it were my concession simply for being able to live in a civilized society. I could let the state lock him up, if they were doing it because what I would do to him on my own would be worse. That way, the State is acting because I am putting pressure on it, so it has to in order to maintain its claim to authority.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>So I reflect on the actions of John Brown. In 1854 the congress decided that whether Kansas would be free or slave would be decided by voting. They called it Popular Sovereignty. This shameful proposition was explosive and intolerable. Pro-slavery people from Missouri were agitating and they sacked the town of Lawrence, killing six. Brown and his band of guerrillas responded by killing slave owners along the Pottawatomie Creek. They dragged them out of their homes and then hacked them to pieces with broad swords, for a total of five.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Yale’s David Blight, parts 6 thru 10</p>
<p>[url]<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bzOIn2WVAw&amp;list=EC5DD220D6A1282057">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bzOIn2WVAw&amp;list=EC5DD220D6A1282057</a>[/url]</p>
<p>[url]<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottawatomie_Massacre">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottawatomie_Massacre</a>[/url]</p>
<p> </p>
<p>So I asked myself, if I lived in a world where that was the only sort of justice available, could I do it, could I make myself the enforcer? I cruised by the defendant’s home. It is very nicely kept and in a pristine neighborhood. It’s not the sort of place most people would associate with child molestation. What Paul Mones writes is that the more well off the parents are; the harder it is for the children to find protection. The parents are just not suspected. Outside authorities who should act, don’t. What I’ve learned from the Milan School of Family Systems Therapists is that outside interventions are what differentiates the working class from the middle class. Psychotherapists usually work with the middle class. These folks hire their own doctors. Outside authorities have little basis to intervene. With the working class, if there really is such a thing anymore, there is always outside intervention. There are parole and probations officers. There are child protection officers and public assistance officers. They are always being acted upon by governmental authorities.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Actually I know someone who used to be part of our County Public Mental Health System. Now though he has accepted a psychiatric diagnosis of his own. This puts him on medication, and it also gives him disability money. So his income is fixed and limited. He tries to work the very same system that he used to work in. He is always speaking of the places they “send the indigent patients.” He believes that the only thing keeping him from completely falling into their ranks is this psychiatric medication. He fears the symptoms we identify as mental illness. He believes the medication protects him. I have tried to shake him of this view. But he really really believes it. I listen to his stories of dealing with the system. Wow, if you are not paying the bill, but are in the county’s system, the treatment is horrible. They see their job as making you change. It’s all about using shame and guilt to make you feel that you are the problem.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>So I am proceeding down the street in the defendant’s middle class neighborhood and I come to his home. Could I break down the door? I thought of all the sorts of things people would say, “you have to respect private property … violence solves nothing … no one should be interfering in family affairs … its better just to let it all go … why do you want to be involved in this … Live and Let Live is the better way” I thought about how vehemently this guy blacksheeps eldest daughter, and about how his entire defense is based on discrediting her. I see on his facebook page how he hides behind a parental role. I remember the wife talking about how 30 members of their church will come to court to testify as character witnesses. I see that nothing will change, until this guy is made into an example. I see that the eldest daughter has had to grow up in this environment, and that the only possible remedy would be one that comes from the outside society. We failed to act in allowing all of this to situation to ensue. So we are the only one’s who could remedy it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Could I drag him out onto the sidewalk and then could I kill him? I’ve heard all the responses thousands of times, “you should look at yourself and see why it is that this guy is getting you so plugged in … you should just give it all up to Jesus … when will you have peace? … no one has a right to kill … I hope you find a good therapist.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>If the answer were to be no, that I could not act, then I had no business asking the state to lock him up. Only if the State’s remedy were to be less than what I would do, only if the State were acting as a proxy for me, could I ask the State to lock him up. Yes, most certainly I would act. It’s contingent though on hearing firsthand the testimony of the 3 daughters first hand. I couldn’t do it just on the basis of the police report. I have to hear the girls testify and I have to hear them under cross examination. Then, if convinced that they were being truthful, I could hunt him down and kill him. More than anything, this is about how he has harmed his children because then he does not have to face his own pain. If he gets away with it, then everyone else will be able to continue to do it, and then blame the child. The motive for the direct perpetrators and the motive for collaborators are the same. It’s always about avoiding one’s own pain, and maintaining a social identity.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The only way which is different from Nirvana seeking and collaboration is the way of action. Only when you are committed to inflicting consequence, and actually are doing it, are you facing the harm which has been done. If you are not acting, you are in denial. So what I seek then are comrades, those who want to act to inflict consequence. Alone, it is really hard. Our society is set up to treat those who act alone as psychopaths. But with a group of committed persons, nearly anything is possible. I want a group of people who will strike.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>A particular type of child exploitation is built into industrial capitalism, where The Family is something people hold up to give themselves legitimacy. So I want to focus on North America and western Europe. I want to strike at persons who use children in order to try and legitimate themselves. Some have called this the Apperances Family, or the Instrumentalization of children. I want us to start taking offensive actions to hold the perpetrators responsible. The marker to look for here is animosity between parent and child. When an adult child comes forward and tells their story, they risk being denigrated for not living up to the Self-Reliance Ethic. This is where we must step in and strike. We will not be able act in every case, but we should be able to act in enough to make examples of some people. This will be enough to foster change, because it will force people to openly take sides. Just organizing and entering into this sort of a fight will give us back the freedom we have had to exist without.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I’ve approached some of those working to deal with Catholic clergy sexual abuse. I tried to get them to talk about familial sexual abuse, and specifically about legal redress. I got nothing. Some freaked out and turned hostile to me. Then I tried to get them to take part in this Christian Fundamentalist case. They just completely blackballed me. It’s all too provocative for them. Religion is based on family worshiping. They’ve exposed Clergy Abuse, but they are not able to look at where it comes from and at how the Church has served to promote familyism. So those currently involved with Catholic clergy sexual abuse are not going to help here.</p>
<p>So I am looking for those who want to find ways to act, who want to establish redress and want to create deterrence. See, as long as we see it all as ‘our problem’, then we are denying ourselves social status and denying ourselves freedom. We are saying that we don’t deserve to have social legitimacy, because we suffer from a defect.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Here in the US we’ve just passed through another Mother’s Day. Two women asked me to take a picture of them with a cake. So I obliged. Then they offered to take a picture of me with the cake and send it to my mother. They could not fathom the idea that I did not want that, that it was completely out of the question. I explained to them that originally Mother’s Day came from feminist efforts to gain the vote, and it was to honor the contributions of women outside of the home. It was the commercial world which turned it outside in. But this was mostly just a means of blunting their probing and politely maintaining my privacy.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>If instead of fighting back, we keep trying to give ourselves social status by reading the latest pedagogy manuals, then we are just further subjugating ourselves. We are making ourselves into a caste of persons who will never have legitimacy, because we have been harmed, and harmed so much that we believe we don’t have the right to fight back.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I have been looking into a local patricide case. Some years ago a high school boy shot his father dead. It connects to this Christian Fundamentalist case because the boy and the father had been members of the same church. Both the defendant and the wife cited this to justify how scared they were and why they imposed a total crack down on their eldest daughter and eldest son. They took everything out of the children’s rooms. They subjected the daughter to random strip searches, pregnancy tests, and STD tests. It was all designed to humiliate the children. They got the boy removed from the home on the justification of a psychiatric condition and him being dangerous. The girl finally got out on her own, but not before a fair amount of sexual fondling. This was intended to harm her, to make her like her parents and like the other members of their fundamentalist church.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>There had been talk and a runaway list where the two children were to get a gun and kill their father. This is being used in this molestation case to try and justify the defendants actions and discredit the eldest daugther. I’ve written to the DA that you can’t dance around this. You can’t let the defense continue to make it look like the eldest daughter is trying to hide something. Instead learn from Paul Mones. Treat this like it actually was a charged attempted parricide. Imagine the worst case, that the only reason the sister and brother didn’t do it was the constant searching. Then make the jury understand how the situation looked to the them, how they saw there being no other alternative. Exonerate them in them in the eyes of the jury. You have to do this because the defense is still based on blaming the children. Then get the father convicted.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I did not fully understand this Christian Fundamentalist case on the way in. I did not understand how the Defense could perpetuate the blacksheeping of the eldest daughter and try to turn it all back on her and make conviction very difficult. These are extremely conformist parents. The eldest daughter may want to be different from them, but she is not. So it sounds like she is accusing her father because he is someone she cannot look up to and admire. It sounds like she is accusing him, just as he is accusing her. Because the parents are the ones who had the power, it sounds like their accusations are just a reflection of eldest daughter’s accusations against them. Our society makes the child the one who is wrong, when accusing the parents. But in fact, she is only accusing them because they have done her wrong, by their own standards. I’ve written at great length to explain this to the DA.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The specific charged accusations against the defendant tend to get lost. The defense attorney is someone who has built his career by turning molestation cases back against the child victims. He has studied the patterns in family conflicts and has learned how to do this. I was not expecting anything like this going in. The DA seems not to have been ready for it either.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I’ve been on lots of forums, and had to put up with lots of denigration. From the postings, and even more so from some private communications, I’ve still been able to glean something. Familial sexual molestation is not done just for the sexual gratification of the perpetrator. No, there is also a second purpose of at least equal weight. It’s done to harm the child, to make them feel that their sexuality is dirty and to make them ashamed of and mistrustful of their own desires. It’s done to imprint upon the child the understanding that all must be sacrificed to keep up appearances. It’s done to make the child like the parent. As the child has been used their entire life, so the child is now to fully understand and accept this. The parent needs this so that their own denial systems are not threatened and so that they don’t have to face the pain in their own experience.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>So I worked long and hard and wrote a very careful 22 pages of analysis to the DA. I’ve done everything I can to give her what she needs to get the job done. I’ve made my involvement in this completely partisan and I’ve extended myself as far as possible, making numerous written and verbal communications. I’ve shown her everything that this defense attorney was able to do to turn it back on the eldest daughter. And I’ve argued that this defendant deserves the full 50 year sentence. I’ve argued that there needs to be additional legal reform because the wife should be in prison too. I’ll be disclosing more of this in the months ahead. For now I can only disclose a little. I have to withhold the rest of it and I cannot discuss the specific standing of the case.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I’m also trying to make the argument that there also have to be civil suits, as the criminal bar can never be set low enough. Further, there must be a disinheritance prevention, to cover those cases where you cannot really sue. So it’s a continuum running from criminal prosecution, down to abuse law suits, then all the way down to a blanket disinheritance prohibition. The criminal convictions are necessary for the more extreme cases, and to establish the principle that the blacksheeping and child exploitation are not tolerated. The abuse suits cover the cases which don’t rise to the level of criminal prosecution. They also serve as a credible threat in order to negotiate compromise settlements. Finally, a disinheritance prohibition covers the cases where there is not sufficient proof to warrant an abuse suit. Only if we have all three levels of redress in play, will our society finally accept the premise that you cannot have children simply so that you can use them in order to gain an adult identity. Only when we have enforcement at all three levels, will our society finally accept the premise that you cannot exploit children. Only then will we be able to establish outside intervention and outside protective measures.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Only when those of us who refuse to “just get over it” band together and use every means available to fight back, will we finally have social legitimacy. We must reject all forms of collaboration, and reject all collaborators. So if my involvement in this case results in the perpetrator getting a long sentence, then I am going to be boasting about this, claiming it as a trophy, as my first scalp.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I still have to conceal the facticity of the case. But here is what I can disclose right now. A follow up message sent to DA, redacted:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>********</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Just a follow up thought:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It was (2nd daughter) who gave us the most detailed testimony about (defendant)’s instructions on how to masturbate. Certainly he was getting off on this. He was trying to tap into the girls’ sexual experience and make it part of his own. But there was still much more going on. He was trying to prevent them from ever having sexual experiences not tainted by him. He was trying to shatter their sexual experience by making it abstract and alien. (2nd daughter) testified to (defendant) going on about how so long as she was not lusting after anyone, then it was not sinful. He was trying to prevent her from ever being comfortable with her own sexual desires. (defendant) was trying to make her warped like he is. He was trying to harm her. He was trying to make her feel that her sexuality was dirty, and to make her only be able to experience it in some dissociated state. And of course it’s (defendant)’s own dissociation which makes him so harmful.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I am new to looking at this type of criminal case. I don’t know how typical it is. I am hoping that this case might eventually lead to some legal reforms. Besides just charging the direct perpetrator, there need to be ways of also charging collaborating spouses. And the SOL’s need to be extended.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I say that avenues also have to be opened up for civil litigation. (defendant) and (wife) believed that they could exonerate themselves simply by continuing their blacksheeping of (eldest daughter). This blacksheeping is the root of it; it’s how the child’s personhood is revoked. Once this has occurred, then any kind of abuse is possible. The parents will justify themselves simply by perpetuating the blacksheeping. (defendant)’s shameless attorney, is an example of this. It demonstrated that at least in the minds of (defendant) and his attorney, (defendant)’s actions were justified because of (eldest daughter)’s blacksheep status. Some go along with them.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The harm done to a child when they are designated as the blacksheep is beyond measure. You can tell that it has happened because there will be animosity. Unless the child had been designated as blacksheep, and unless their personhood had been revoked, then there would be no such animosity.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But most of the time, no criminal lines will have been crossed. So instead, redress has to come in the form of civil suits. We must learn to understand these cases and to recognize the ways the child has been used, so that there can be such law suits.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Still, there will be many cases where it is impossible to fully deconstruct the parent child relationship. So a good basic remedy then would be just to follow the direction taken by most of Europe, and prohibit disinheritance. Perhaps there might be some compromise out of court settlements where assets and cash are put into a trust fund. The parents may still be able to get some of it, if they can convince the trust executor that there is legitimate need.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I’m sure that persons like (defendant) and (wife) never imagined that they could be on trial. They did what they thought they could get away with. They justified it by the blacksheep status they assigned to both (eldest daughter) and (eldest son). Now they have perpetuated that with (defendant)’s defense.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>If instead, they knew that they would get sued and lose, this would have served as deterrence. If they knew that the animosity alone would be seen as highly indicative of tortious abuse, then they would have had to stop and step back and look at themselves.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Keeping up appearances and measuring up to social expectations are everything to (defendant) and (wife). This is why it has been so hard for (defendant) to admit to all the he lost when he signed on to the arrangement. He has to hide it all behind screwy behaviors. If (defendant) and (wife) knew that the animosity generated by their blacksheeping would bite them back in a civil court and that their blacksheeping would not help them, but would instead be held against them, then they would not have done it. They would have had to turn to outside resources, like Family System’s Therapy. Likewise, if our entire society no longer accepted the blacksheeping of children and instead held the parents responsible, then we would have to provide other resources to remedy problems. So as I see it, civil suits and a disinheritance prohibition are the way to create deterrence with a low enough bar.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It all still depends upon criminal prosecution though. The justification for the other remedies lies in the claim that something at least approaching a criminal wrong may have been perpetrated. So when clear criminal lines have been crossed, there must be prosecution, conviction, and long sentencing.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>********</p>
<p> </p>
<p>If it goes the way I want I'm going to be bragging to everyone I have contact with. I'm going to be bragging about how many years he is in prison for, and how I helped to put him there. I'm going to tell about all my communications with the DA, both in writing and in the court house hallway.</p>
<p><br/>Most of the people who know the defendant are from his church. He and the wife were able to convince many of them that this case was a product of the excesses of police, and of the evilness of the eldest daughter, as well as the evilness of the non-Evangelical Christian forces of feminism and child protection.<br/><br/>I'll be explaining about all I've written to the DA, explaining the intense energy the defendant and the wife have invested in blacksheeping this eldest daughter, and how that was what originally<br/>alerted me that there must be something to the charges.<br/><br/>I'll be explaining about how I wrote to the DA explaining that most all of the families in their church have a family blacksheep. Usually it’s about drugs and alcohol, but if the black sheep is female it’s also about sex. It’s whatever it takes to make the blacksheep expendable. The blacksheep is the designated scapegoat, because they are the one who can't subscribe to the denial systems.<br/><br/>It would be one thing if this were all just hypothetical. But this is a guy with an absolutely clean record and he stands to get over a decade in the state prison, and all that I'm going to be bragging about is what I actually did write to the DA. I’ll be responding to<br/>every counter argument with, "Well what I wrote to the DA was ....." It’s different when it’s already been done. I'm even going to be bragging to strangers on the street.</p>
<p>Maybe I am over estimating my own influence in this. So what though. My point is that I did not just lie on the couch and vent. I’m claiming responsibility for helping to put this guy away. Like all cases, this one is also political. Prosecutors, police, judges, and juries need to see that the public cares about such enforcements and that the public is able to see through defenses aimed at turning it back on the child. We aren’t going to be able to take this to the next level until this happens.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I’ve been involved in a previous case where activists packed the courtroom solid, picketed in front of the court house, and made daily statements to the television cameras. This should have been handled the same way. But there was nothing. No one seemed to care.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Now that previous case was about something different and the activists were supporting the Defense. But still, those who care about this subject area must start to stand up.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The idea that familial exploitation only causes problems in one’s head is just another layer of extreme abuse. The issue is social and civil standing. You cannot retake social and civil standing by confessing to therapists, by reading pedagogy manuals, or by punching pillows. You can’t get there by becoming well adjusted.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The only way to retake social and civil standing is to do it by force, by inflicting consequence, by becoming a guerrilla.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Commiserators are everywhere. They are worthless. They are worse than worthless. I’m calling for comrades. I want to organize and start striking at locations in North America and western Europe.<br/><br/></p>
<p>BO</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When Awareness is Not a Choice</p>
<p><a href="http://z6.invisionfree.com/awarenessnotachoice/index.php">http://z6.invisionfree.com/awarenessnotachoice/index.php</a>?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>John Brown is celebrated at his grave site in Elba New York each year on May 9th</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist)">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist)</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Here, I’ve even gotten an early response from another forum, one where the moderators create the appearance that off topic and meta are not allowed:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I gave up reading the rant, once again concluding that B.O. seems to be a very unpleasant person, far more unpleasant that the "evil" he/she is fighting.”</p> Possession and Exorcismtag:atheistnexus.org,2013-04-18:2182797:Topic:22153452013-04-18T00:45:26.844ZKane Augustushttp://atheistnexus.org/profile/KaneAugustus
<p><span class="font-size-3">I am beginning to realize I may not have time to complete all the different ideas floating around in my head. I do a little here, a little there...blog posts and comments...but I can't see myself accomplishing anything in the 20 or so years I have left. Maybe it's because I fall a lot...five or six times a year no matter what the weather conditions...usually on the sidewalk but yesterday I fell crossing an intersection. If the van coming towards me hadn't stopped…</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">I am beginning to realize I may not have time to complete all the different ideas floating around in my head. I do a little here, a little there...blog posts and comments...but I can't see myself accomplishing anything in the 20 or so years I have left. Maybe it's because I fall a lot...five or six times a year no matter what the weather conditions...usually on the sidewalk but yesterday I fell crossing an intersection. If the van coming towards me hadn't stopped you would be reading this through a medium!</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">I need to focus on a single issue and have a set goal in mind to accomplish.</span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">I've decided to focus on demonic possession and exorcism. My personal experience is with the Pentecostal Holiness form of exorcism. As far as demonology...not to show my age...but I cut my teeth on Derek Prince and FGBMFI...Fig-Bif-Mi, as we used to call it back in the day...Demos Shakarian's Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship International...they were the first group to target high level businessmen, celebrities and politicians. They expanded their mission through cassette tapes...just as I used when I first came out of the Charismatic world and openly spoke of my experiences back in the 1980s. My goal back then, naively enough, was to try to drive a wedge between legitimate Christianity...yes, I was still a Christian at the time...and the mental and spiritual abuses I suffered as a Charismatic. I did seminars under the Spirit of Truth title with a quote from the Psalms that summed it all up for me: "Thou has led captivity captive" and a logo of the Charismatic 'dive bombing dove' with a red circle and slash over it. Went on from there to try and form a informational and activist group called the Christians Against the Charismatic Heresy. CATCH...had a logo with a Xtian fish dangling from a hook in its mouth. </span></p>
<p><span class="font-size-3">I'm interested in any discussion that has been going on about this subject. Personal experiences are fine...but I want to take this beyond mere anecdotal evidence. That is all the Enemy...no God means I can hate my enemies, yippee!...has to offer to bolster their unverifiable and ludricous claims of spinning heads, levitation and the like. Actually, that goes back to the book Blatty used for the material on which he based the Exorcist from which the modern concept of possession has risen. I've forgotten the name of the book, have to dig it out and get me a copy off Amazon.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 16px;">I want any actually scientific study on belief in demons and exorcism...not anthropological studies of ancient or exotic cultures...but of exorcism as it is practiced in the United States in the second decade of the 21st century. I want to confirm the correalation between Holy Spirit Possession and Demonic Possession.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 16px;">I don't want to re-invent the wheel. If something is already out there, just give me a title and author. If this has been discussed in this forum, then point me in the right direction.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 16px;">I've read M. Scott Peck on the subject and came close to the classic green pea soup projectile vomiting! Same with Marty Martin. But I'm going to read them again. I'm setting out on a course of watching every demonic possession and exorcism movie that's come out since the Exorcist...no sense going further back than that. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 16px;">I need direction, I need input, and I need help.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 16px;">The project is to create and publish a book on the subject...hopefully through a legitimate publisher like Prometheus, but I'll settle for an online book through Createspace..or, if I come into some money, XLibris or one of the classier vanity book publishers.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 16px;">My goal is twofold:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 16px;">First to have belief that you or others are possessed by demons listed in the next edition of the DSM (</span><strong><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders</span></strong><span style="font-size: 12pt;">) put out by the American Psychiatric Association as a mental illness.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Second the passage of a law banning the practice of exorcism on minors. Adults...people over thirty in my admittedly arbitrary opinion... are capable of making their own decisions and suffering the results.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">No one has the right to teach demonology or practice exorcism on a child. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Even if you don't quite go as far as Richard Dawkins in declaring all religious education of minors as abuse (a statement I wholeheartedly endorse but cannot imagine a way of banning) exorcism of a child is an abuse far more prevalent than priest/preacher pedophilia and with harm extending just as far and even further into the adult who was victimized in such a truly satanic practice.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I see the figures of the growing secular movement in this country. If this is true, and I hope it is for our nation's sake, then I feel the first step, the first flexing of the new found power of this sizeable secular minority, should be to protect the children. Christians have known this all along. The old saw about 'give me a child for the first seven years of his life and I'll give you the man."</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">We need to reclaim our children, our grandchildren.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I'm sixty-three this August. Like I said, I don't have much time. As an atheist, my personal ethics come down to a simple acronym:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">TCOYOS</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Take Care of Your Own Shit</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Meaning, if anything is going to change you can't wait for it to happen. If you want to change something then you have to do it yourself.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">"Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord."</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The Lord God doesn't exist.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Therefore:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Vengeance is yours. It is up to you to repay. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The oldest law: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth...a life for a life.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 16px;">The Chicago Way, as Sean Connery put it in Brian dePalma's <strong>The Untouchable.</strong></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 16px;">Fight back.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 16px;">If you don't have the guts to fight back, then get out of the way of us who do.</span></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p> New Report Indicates Steady Increase in Those With No Religious Affiliationtag:atheistnexus.org,2013-03-15:2182797:Topic:21923022013-03-15T03:30:41.616ZKane Augustushttp://atheistnexus.org/profile/KaneAugustus
<p> </p>
<p><em>The report found that, "the unaffiliated say they are not looking for a religion that would be right for them. Overwhelmingly, they think that religious organizations are too concerned with money and power, too focused on rules and too involved in politics."</em></p>
<p> …</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>The report found that, "the unaffiliated say they are not looking for a religion that would be right for them. Overwhelmingly, they think that religious organizations are too concerned with money and power, too focused on rules and too involved in politics."</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/13/religion-america-decline-low-no-affiliation-report_n_2867626.html?ir=Religion">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/13/religion-america-decline-low-no-affiliation-report_n_2867626.html?ir=Religion</a></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"></p> Television Channel for Secularismtag:atheistnexus.org,2013-01-22:2182797:Topic:21491912013-01-22T05:52:49.804ZKane Augustushttp://atheistnexus.org/profile/KaneAugustus
<p>Is it time to have a TV channel that produces news reports and analysis that argues the atheist point of view? Wouldn't it be cool to watch documentary of how our lives are evolving as secularist? Think of the amount of jobs that could be created for atheist thinkers with a televised network. How would it be funded and where would we put the main building headquarters? I'm thinking Washington D.C. would be a good place.</p>
<p>Is it time to have a TV channel that produces news reports and analysis that argues the atheist point of view? Wouldn't it be cool to watch documentary of how our lives are evolving as secularist? Think of the amount of jobs that could be created for atheist thinkers with a televised network. How would it be funded and where would we put the main building headquarters? I'm thinking Washington D.C. would be a good place.</p> We need an enlightened citizenry, able and willing to learn New Age skills.tag:atheistnexus.org,2013-01-06:2182797:Topic:21382552013-01-06T22:23:37.015ZKane Augustushttp://atheistnexus.org/profile/KaneAugustus
<p>Our enlightened founding fathers envisioned a nation that did not have kings with divine rights, nor popes, potentates, absolute monarchs, autocrats, totalitarians, despots, dictators, or tyrants. They were men who could read and write and had experiences with educated, progressive thinkers. They were men ready to move away from antiquated modes of thinking and ruling. They wanted to be free of the mind-binding that occurred under the dictates of church and monarch.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>An…</p>
<p>Our enlightened founding fathers envisioned a nation that did not have kings with divine rights, nor popes, potentates, absolute monarchs, autocrats, totalitarians, despots, dictators, or tyrants. They were men who could read and write and had experiences with educated, progressive thinkers. They were men ready to move away from antiquated modes of thinking and ruling. They wanted to be free of the mind-binding that occurred under the dictates of church and monarch.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>An opposing force grew beside these men who believed in subordination of women, ownership of humans in a slave relationship and their value system did not question these views. As the world changed around them, their religious conviction enabled them to deny what was changing in social structures and deluded themselves that they were somehow superior to others; they struggle to this day to maintain and perpetuate intolerance and discriminations of all kinds.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Their methods were building hope for a better life and fear of damnation after death. They continue to use ignorance, misinformation, illogical, religiously based thinking and reign over our society through political influences. In the United States, religious right is the most powerful force against rational, secular society. Their hate mongering against women and GLBT continues and even intensifies. Their hate mongering never ends. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Even as society evolves away from antiquated modes of thinking, progress continues simply because we no longer need kings or potentates. We need an enlightened citizenry, able and willing to learn new skills and move into a New Age.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=DoHdO2rwGwE#!" target="_blank">Pat Robertson Tells Man to Beat his Wife, Move to Saudi Arabia</a></p>
<p>The foolish man, Pat Robertson, stated he was only kidding ... just like he does not understands the fallacies of his theology. This thinking will end because reasonable, informed men and women refuse to remain silent in face of this outrageous ignorance. </p>
<p></p> Catholic Church's heavy hand - put humanity above dogmatag:atheistnexus.org,2012-12-13:2182797:Topic:21218872012-12-13T16:38:36.939ZKane Augustushttp://atheistnexus.org/profile/KaneAugustus
<p><strong>Sad news on the FFRF site.</strong></p>
<p><strong>It shows us how harmful religion and dogma can be. </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>Catholic Church's heavy hand weighs down the Irish</strong><br></br>November 19, 2012</p>
<p>By Annie Laurie Gaylor<br></br>FFRF Co-President</p>
<blockquote>Last week I wrote a blog about the heavy hand of the Catholic Church upon women in the Philippines. Two days later came news of the…</blockquote>
<p><strong>Sad news on the FFRF site.</strong></p>
<p><strong>It shows us how harmful religion and dogma can be. </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>Catholic Church's heavy hand weighs down the Irish</strong><br/>November 19, 2012</p>
<p>By Annie Laurie Gaylor<br/>FFRF Co-President</p>
<blockquote>Last week I wrote a blog about the heavy hand of the Catholic Church upon women in the Philippines. Two days later came news of the horrifying and unnecessary death of a young, professional Indian woman living in Galway. Savita Halappanavar <strong>died after an incomplete miscarriage, denied a life-saving abortion because in predominantly Catholic Ireland the hospital was too cowardly to save her life.</strong><p>Even though Ireland’s constitution bans abortion, a 1992 Supreme Court ruling was issued permitting abortion when the woman’s life is at risk.</p>
<p>Savita’s pregnancy was wanted. She wasn’t seeking an abortion, she was seeking medical intervention to complete a miscarriage. The hospital, afraid of Catholic criticism, held back, waiting for the fetus to die on its own. Thus, in the name of saving an already doomed fetal life, a woman’s life was lost as well. Savita, a married dentist, was pronounced dead Oct. 28, after a week of suffering. Dying of blood septicemia (blood poisoning) is one of the most gruesome and painful of deaths.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Read the rest <a href="http://ffrf.org/news/blog/item/16131-catholic-churchs-heavy-hand-weighs-down-the-irish" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>